About time.
Steven Gerrard was never going to have a pop at one of his team mates when he was captain of Liverpool Football Club, was he?
Even if that team mate was Mario bloody Balotelli.
But, in his new book that has unleashed all sorts of gems about Xabi Alonso and even his own penis, Stevie G has also laid in to the big Italian centre forward who Liverpool still unfortunately have on their books.
The autobiography, being serialised in the Daily Mail, revealed that Gerrard’s patience with Balotelli wore thin very quickly.
“After his promising debut against Tottenham, he had lapsed in training and the subsequent games. His demeanour was very poor,” the book reads. “I made my mind up pretty quickly after that about Balotelli.
“We got on fine. I still tried to help him and I kept looking for chances to praise him but I could see why Mourinho had been right when he said Balotelli is unmanageable.
“He is very talented with the potential to be world class, but he’ll never get there because of his mentality and the people around him. Balotelli’s always late, he always wants attention.”
Except, of course, when he’s asked to defend. Then, he just wants to be left the hell alone.
“He made an immediate impression when we were doing work on our defensive set pieces and Balotelli said to Brendan: ‘I don’t mark on corners. I can’t,'” Gerrard revealed.
“I nearly fell into the goalpost. I was thinking, ‘What are you? 6’3”, and one of the strongest men I’ve ever seen on a football pitch? And you can’t mark on a corner?’
“Brendan was very firm. He said to Balotelli: ‘Well, you can now — and if you can’t then you’re going to learn.’
“That was the first conflict between Brendan and Balotelli, on day one, but the manager stood up to Mario really well. From that point, Balotelli started marking on corners.”
Of course, for all of Rodgers’ drawbacks last season and this season so far, at least he knew himself that Balotelli was a gamble.
“In my last season, Brendan Rodgers came to me at Melwood one day in mid-August,” the skipper said. “We had a chat on the training pitch.
“He said, ‘You know we’ve missed out on a couple of signings. I’m basically left with no option but to have a bit of a gamble.’
“Brendan paused before he spoke again: ‘The gamble is Mario Balotelli.’ My instant reaction was, ‘Uh-oh.'”
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